Churches can be scary.But they shouldnt be.To quote the minister of a Methodist chapel I occasionally frequent"I'd rather people left thinking "Nice people shame about the service" than "Nice service shame about the people""

I had too many glasses of the red stuff on Saturday night and woke up yesterday with a steaming hangover.. I then had to be in church by 9.00 to lead the service! I have not had a hangover for 20 years!

Thankfully I wasn't doing the talk. Had it been about the evils of drink I might have been even more ashamed...

That said, somebody meant to be involved in the service chose to go to a race to support his wife, who was running it. I felt a little let down because he wasn't actually involved in the race and we really needed him there. She does lots of races, so it wasn't like this was a one off event.

Is that wrong? This was a special service that was the culmination of a years work for those of us who had been on a course. I was quite surprised I felt that way, because I was the only runner among the people taking the service and nobody else seemed bothered. You'd have thought I'd have been the one fighting his corner.....

Or even both at the same time if you allow recording a bible reading, while out on a training run, which was played in church at the same time as I was half way round FLM.

For the record I'm one of the leaders at our junior church, the children that come along to our groups on a Sunday have parents who already believe in God or who are just starting out learning about God themselves. We try to put on a range of activities that will the children will enjoy and also give them the opportunity to ask questions that they might not get the chance to ask otherwise. Yesterday we even roped in one of the parents who has severe hearing loss so that they could explore what it is like to go from being able to hear to having to deal with being deaf. It was very illuminating for all of us, not just the children.

I went and saw a play at the weekend called "inherit the wind" which is about the creationism verses evolution/darwin debate.My understanding of christianity is that the bible is the word of God and that in the bible it states that God created the earth in 7 days. Science has proved (certainly to me) that animals and plants are the way they are today because of millions of years of evolution and that therefore there's no way that things were put on this earth in its present form (by God or any other force).

So do those of you who are religious believe in :

A) Creationism and ignore the scientific 'proof' that the earth was not created in seven days as stated in the bibleORB) Evolution which (I assume) would mean that you accept that the bible is incorrect

I was always brought up to undersatnd that those who are religious cannot 'believe' in evolutionism because it goes against what the bible states.Obviously I don't want to sound flippant or dismissive of someones religion, nor do I want to stir up a massive debate but I've not had the opportunity to ask this question before and I'd just like to know what opinions other people have

The creation account in Genesis 1 was written at a time in Jewish history when the nation of Israel was encountering other cultures that believed in many gods and had their own creation myths. The "seven days" of Genesis 1 is probably a response to this - its a literary structure rather than a historical one. The point for the original writers and readers, in my view, was that one God made the earth, the sun, the stars, the land and sea, etc, rather than a different god ruling over each one.

The language of Genesis 1 isn't ordinary prose of the kind that you might expect in a historical narrative. It isn't poetry, but it isn't ordinary Hebrew either. I'm not sure that there is a modern equivalent, but the closest might be a kind of ceremonial language.

The kind of literalist interpretation that both creationists and their evolutionist opponents tend to take is, in my view, wrong. If Genesis had been written in the 19th century, it would probably have been written as a literal, scientific account of the origins of life. But it wasn't written in the 19th century - it was written in a time and culture that wrote history in very different ways to the way that we do. I don't see a contradiction between Genesis and evolution because I don't think that Genesis 1-3 was ever intended to be read as literal history. Even in Britain, literalist readings didn't become the main way of reading the Bible until around the 17th or 18th century.

If you're interested in this topic, two books that are worth a look are Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose? by Denis Alexander (a Christian and a biologist) and Can a Darwnian be a Christian? by Michael Ruse (atheist and philosopher of science).

Problem is, with all religious texts, that sections can be taken literally to fulfil the readers own beliefs. Which is why we religous fundementalists of all persuasions believing it is their god given duty to kill or assimilate those of other beliefs.

There has to be a distintion between those who believe that God created the universe, and those that adhear to a religion.

Within a religoin there seems to be varieties of sects with their own interpretations. I think those who follow an organised religion fall into two groups. The first group reqire to be shown leadership and given the promise of eternal life if they follow the rules. The other group use religion to exercise personal power.

I'm an agnostic. There a various flavours of agnostic belief too, mine is that we don't have an explanation - yet, and may never have one, but an am positive that all religions are the invention of mankind for their own purpose, be it comfort or control.

Problem is, with all religious texts, that sections can be taken literally to fulfil the readers own beliefs. Which is why we religous fundementalists of all persuasions believing it is their god given duty to kill or assimilate those of other beliefs.

That can be true of lots of texts, not just religious ones. Lots of people read Darwin and concluded that they should give evolution a helping hand by wiping out those parts of humanity that they didn't want to see reproducing.

That's why responsible interpretation is important. If you spend serious time looking into culture and context, then the more extreme misreadings become far less likely.

Previously bookmarked threads are now visible in "Followed Threads". You can also manage notifications on these threads from the "Forum Settings" section of your profile settings page to prevent being sent an email when a reply is made.

Runner's World is a publication of Hearst Magazines UK which is the trading name of The National Magazine Company Ltd, 72 Broadwick Street, London, W1F 9EP. Registered in England 112955. All rights reserved. Runner's World, Part of the Hearst UK wellbeing network